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Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO

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Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO

#91

Post by tasogare »

tasogare wrote: post #67
bawolff wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People learn languages for a variety of purposes. Some people just want to know enough to be able to ask where the bathroom is and read a menu at a resturant.

Except you won't be able to do that with Duolingo. I'll go as far as saying that Duolingo is (very) negative for learners: it sells them the idea they are learning a language and progressing when they are in fact not. A good example of that is a comment I read here on HN from a user defending Duolingo since it allowed him to master hiragana (one script of Japanese) after two years and half. This is normally taking a…

Replying to deleted post:

First, you don't need 10k kanji to read. About 3000-5000 depending on what you read is enough. Then count 400-500 kanji per year if learning at university and being motivated (lot of people stops).

For conversation count two intensive years for the bare minimum, add one for more fluency. Actually all depends on how much effort you spend on it, I know a guy who was JLPT N2 or so after it's first university year (needless to say, he spent an aweful amount of time practicing, especially with natives). Then add at least one year in Japan to really get a good grasp (I went from N3 to N2 in a year while basically partying).

Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO

#92

Post by vr46 »

Semaphor wrote: post #39
vncecartersknee wrote: post #4

Honestly from using duolingo pretty heavily for a couple of years, attending language classes and doing my own individual study I've found duolingo pretty useless. It's "fun" and gives one the sense of progress without really accomplishing much.

It’s useless for properly learning a language. For getting the basics of a language in a game-y way that doesn’t feel like studying, it’s great. My wife managed to pass her German A1 (CEFR [0]) exam almost completely by just using Duolingo. She took some free Deutsche Welle exam prep courses in the week before, but to even get to the level to understand those, she used Duolingo. If you need to learn a language quickl…

So I am using Duolingo as I will have to take the sane exam at some point over the next year or two. I think it works ok for being able to consume simple German but less well for understanding spoken German, or constructing one’s own ideas.

In other words, it doesn’t make the hard things easy or easier.

It is a great alternative to wasting time on social media or news sites, however.

Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO

#93

Post by ibudiallo »

Here is one thing that happened to me after using Duolingo every day, multiple times a day for more than a year. I became extremely good at it. Throw any language at me, I'll complete it in record time. Sometimes I played it without even the sound on.

Do I speak any of the languages in the game? Hardly. This realization came to me after I completed the Japanese class and my sister asked me to count to ten. I knew all the numbers, their symbols, and the placement in a sentence. But I could not count to ten.

Duolingo is a game before being a learning tool. It is fun to use and I'm almost jealous that they are going to IPO. But it's kinda like farmville. You become good at the game, but you probably won't become a farmer after playing.

Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO

#94

Post by vr46 »

dep_b wrote: post #22

Some of it’s statistics were pretty interesting, like the huge amount of Arabic speaking people that wanted to learn Swedish.

Driven by many refugees that sought asylum in Sweden, I believe.

https://blog.duolingo.com/our-commitments-to-helping-refugee...

Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO

#95

Post by Semaphor »

vr46 wrote: post #92
Semaphor wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s useless for properly learning a language. For getting the basics of a language in a game-y way that doesn’t feel like studying, it’s great. My wife managed to pass her German A1 (CEFR [0]) exam almost completely by just using Duolingo. She took some free Deutsche Welle exam prep courses in the week before, but to even get to the level to understand those, she used Duolingo. If you need to learn a language quickl…

So I am using Duolingo as I will have to take the sane exam at some point over the next year or two. I think it works ok for being able to consume simple German but less well for understanding spoken German, or constructing one’s own ideas. In other words, it doesn’t make the hard things easy or easier. It is a great alternative to wasting time on social media or news sites, however.

The A1 exam is a pretty simple test ;)

Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO

#96

Post by uniqueid »

dep_b wrote: post #22

Some of it’s statistics were pretty interesting, like the huge amount of Arabic speaking people that wanted to learn Swedish.

I don't know how recent that statistic is, but the statistics Duolingo released a few years back were misleading. I believe Duolingo claimed, for example, that Swedish speakers were most interested in learning Arabic, but they left out the fact that they only offered one course for Swedish-speakers aside from Arabic.

Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO

#97

Post by gambiting »

least wrote: post #46

I was a cryptologic linguist for the army and went through a 16 month course of 6-7 hours of classroom instruction per day M-F, native speaking instructors, tons of immersion, and a couple hours of homework each night and left still feeling like I hardly knew the language that I was supposed to be interpreting. Unless your major in college is a specific language, you probably won't achieve any sort of fluency in your…

I've learnt both English and German at school, for pretty much equal amounts of time - about 12 years each. And well, I can speak fluent English, but barely any German, despite usually having at least ~2 hours of lessons a week, plenty of homework, oral exercises.....

For me, it has everything to do with actually using the languge in practice. English was and is everywhere - it's much easier to practice when all your favourite movies, games and books are in English - but my real life experience with German was limited to those few times we went to Germany or Austria.;

I feel duolingo has the same problem - no matter how much you "learn" with the app, it won't ever stick unless you can practice somewhere in the real world.

Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO

#98

Post by konschubert »

gambiting wrote: post #97
least wrote: post #46

I was a cryptologic linguist for the army and went through a 16 month course of 6-7 hours of classroom instruction per day M-F, native speaking instructors, tons of immersion, and a couple hours of homework each night and left still feeling like I hardly knew the language that I was supposed to be interpreting. Unless your major in college is a specific language, you probably won't achieve any sort of fluency in your…

I've learnt both English and German at school, for pretty much equal amounts of time - about 12 years each. And well, I can speak fluent English, but barely any German, despite usually having at least ~2 hours of lessons a week, plenty of homework, oral exercises..... For me, it has everything to do with actually using the languge in practice. English was and is everywhere - it's much easier to practice when all your…

It works if you're learning the language while you're in a place where it's spoken.

Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO

#99

Post by estaseuropano »

vncecartersknee wrote: post #4

Honestly from using duolingo pretty heavily for a couple of years, attending language classes and doing my own individual study I've found duolingo pretty useless. It's "fun" and gives one the sense of progress without really accomplishing much.

Can only agree. Duolingo gives some basic vocabulary but after that basically is useless, especially as the way it teaches grammar forms (and on the mobile app barely any explicit rules) is 100% useless. Native speakers looking at example sentences in the target language are often shocked at the nonsense that is provided.

But worst for me is that it wastes time. The unnecessarily ineffective repetitions, all the features and ads intended to upsell 'Pro', etc. There are dozens of other apps that do it better for free (e.g. good old Anki, or newcomers like Clozemaster) and when on a desktop a whole wealth of professional learning resources are available, both old ones that are now public domain, the world of wikis and collaborative learning and flashcards, and no-profit materials. For instance lots of organizations fund free courses, e.g. the EU funded a bunch of sites for learning languages, like https://deutsch.info, and national broadcasters like RF1 (French), DW (German) provide great professional and current materials. Podcasts and youtubers teach any language imaginable, etc.

Try Duolingo to get a taste, but after a few lessons look for your language online and you'll find much better stuff.

Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO

#100

Post by estaseuropano »

ipnon wrote: post #2

I was a Duolingo launch user, when revenue was driven by crowdsourced translations. I used Duolingo to learn basic phrases in some languages over many years, but I had to stop using the app. There were too many basic mistakes in grammar and vocabulary. Duolingo innovated by bringing a structured language course with spaced repetition to mobile early in the previous decade. It seems they will need another burst of inn…

I'm not sure they innovated much. Other apps like Babbel are older and had the same features, if not more and better. Duolingo rode the 'free' and 'hip startup' publicity wave and had an interesting idea that they'd use the users to crowdsource translations. But that didn't pan out - everything afterwards seems to have been just scaling with no innovation whatsoever.
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